


these old laurel leaves

by napoleonscomet



Series: these old laurel leaves [1]
Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: F/M, M/M, love story ouroboros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napoleonscomet/pseuds/napoleonscomet
Summary: It’s not quite the same between the two of them though, she knows. Andrei was a burst of light streaking across her sky, brief and bright and changing her irrevocably, the first love she’d ever known and the first person she’d ever lost. He’s been shining and beautiful, a brighter and shorter-burning flame beside Pierre, who’s fallen from her side but always come back, the constant thread of her life.Were you to ask Pierre, everything started with Andrei, and everything ended with Andrei.





	1. Chapter 1

Were you to ask Natasha, everything started with Pierre, and everything ended with Pierre. Pierre, whom she knew before she had ever learned what it meant to know a person, to feel them a part of your soul, Pierre who had danced with her when she was thirteen and danced with her when she was twenty-one, and held her as she stood motionless in the middle of the ballroom in between. Pierre, whom she’d hardly known she loved because she had never fallen in love with him, Pierre whose hands are large enough to encompass hers, to whose shoulder she barely comes up to. Pierre, whose arm wraps tightly around her waist as he sleeps beside her now, bodies pressed together, skin warm on her own.

He stirs, then wakes up, smiles to see her already awake. “Good morning,” he says, taking her hand.

“Good morning,” she replies, and kisses him sweetly, chastely.

“What were you thinking about?” he asks, and his eyes are so gentle that she almost tells him she’s thinking about him, which isn’t far from the truth, but nor is it the truth.

“I dreamt about him,” she says instead—there’s no need to say his name; between Pierre and Natasha there’s only one person whose name carries so much weight it’s hard to say and unnecessary besides. His grip tightens. “About nothing in particular, we were laughing, talking; I was on the balcony of my room and he was sitting in his window like when we first met, but we were older, and everything had passed between us. He was too far away to touch, but I felt his voice around me, and I wished that you were there, but I was glad to be with him. He looked happy.”

“Are you okay?” Pierre asks.

“I am, actually; I miss him, but I’m not sad about it.”

“I’m glad.” For months after he had died, Natasha had dreamed about him almost every night, picturing him as last she had seen him, dead or nearly so; woken up alone at first and later to Pierre holding her, brushing away her tears. It’s been nearly a year, and her dreams have ceded to this—something of peace, and of clarity. Pierre kisses her again, and she knows that he’s thinking about Andrei too. He’s become a sort of shared secret between the two of them—from the beginning, there’s been an understanding of his place in their lives, like they’ve left the door open for someone who’s just left and can’t quite remember who.

It’s not quite the same between the two of them though, she knows. Andrei was a burst of light streaking across her sky, brief and bright and changing her irrevocably, the first love she’d ever known and the first person she’d ever lost. He’s been shining and beautiful, a brighter and shorter-burning flame beside Pierre, who’s fallen from her side but always come back, the constant thread of her life.

Were you to ask Pierre, everything started with Andrei, and everything ended with Andrei.

…

Pierre meets Lise for the first time at dinner one night as both are visiting the Bolkonskys. She’s sitting across from him and one seat closer to the head of the table, Marya at her one elbow, Bourienne at the other. She seems—quiet, reserved, not at all the socialite he had pictured from Andrei’s descriptions of her. While Lise laughs amiably with Marya, and even more so with Bourienne, she becomes remarkably reticent when Andrei or his father join in the conversation. Pierre’s eyes follow her as she switches gracefully between her various interlocutors, shifting from warm to the women at her side to demure with her fiancee, so tactfully that Pierre wouldn’t have noticed had he not been watching her so closely.

Andrei’s father asks Lise a question that Pierre can’t quite catch, and as she answers it, she casts her gaze down at the prince’s wrinkled hands wringing a napkin over his plate. As she finishes, her glance flicks briefly to Andrei for reassurance. He smiles tightly, a spasm of his facial muscles that doesn’t reach his eyes. To Pierre’s surprise, Lise’s gaze slides over next to him. His face—which oft he had cursed for its expressiveness—must have betrayed the innocent surprise that he was feeling, for Lise smiles at him kindly, her little face dimpling.

Afterwards, Andrei takes the role of a gentleman in helping her out of her chair, but it’s Pierre’s arm that she holds as the four of them—her, Pierre, Andrei, and Marya—move into the parlor to become acquainted. It’s not the first time Pierre has met Marya, but in the time since last they spoke, she’s grown up a lot, and he has too.  Although they had taking a liking to each other—Pierre’s always had an easier time making friends with women, he realizes ruefully—there had been so little time for conversation so many years ago when they first met, and Andrei had monopolized so much of Pierre’s. He’s eager to catch up with her, and eager to become acquainted with Lise.

The conversation amongst the four young people is light, easy, and jovial; nothing of any importance is said, and a great spirit of familiarity settles over them. By the time Marya stretches and yawns, she and Pierre’s shoulders are brushing on the settee they’re occupying, Lise’s hand on Andrei’s knee on the next. Pierre finds himself studying it—her hand, that is; lily-white, smooth, dainty. Much like Andrei’s, he realizes, although he quickly stops himself from even thinking it. He shouldn’t have been looking close enough at either of them to notice such a thing.

Marya rises to standing; Pierre—clumsily, tripping over himself—rises to his feet alongside her. She offers her hand to Lise, helps the other girl stand as well. Andrei stands and kisses his fiancee a brief goodnight, and remains standing until the two exit the room. He crosses over to the basin stand, pours a glass of wine. Runs his hand through his thick brown hair, offers the glass to Pierre, who takes the greatest effort not to allow their fingers to brush in the transaction.

“What do you think of her?” Andrei asks, his eyes serious. They flicker across Pierre’s face—he genuinely cares for his opinion, Pierre realizes.

“I think she’s lovely,” he replies. “Truly, Andrei, I’m terribly happy for you. She’s charming, seems really to love you; she’ll make you happy.”

His friend’s eyes are dark. “I hope so,” he says. “I love her dearly, I have since I met her. I’m in love with her, I can’t imagine loving anyone else so, and yet I still feel this odd apprehension.”

“That’s just because you’re at a crossroads in your life,” Pierre replies.

“I’m sure it is,” says Andrei, smiling, a true one this time. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, how would you know? I wouldn’t have known anything abouut this when I was eighteen. Come, let’s go to my study.”

He’s right, of course he is, but a sudden desire bursts into Pierre to prove him wrong. “I—” he begins, before stopping. How could he do it—Hugo? Andrei is Pierre’s closest confidante (although he’s sure his older, glamourous friend doesn’t regard him in nearly the same way); he trusts him implicitly and completely with everything. Everything but that. Pierre would  cut out his own tongue before he would ever tell Andrei what he’s done in that regard. So he mutely follows behind his friend into the study.

It’s dark and decorated in dark colors, all blues and greys, the massive velvet curtains drawn over the window a deep navy. It’s to these curtains Pierre crosses straight away as Andrei settles down on the couch, his legs crossed gracefully, his glass in his hand. In the flickering glow of the candelabras set in the corners of the room, Pierre can hardly bear to look at him; absolutely cannot stand to be subject to the scrutiny of his gaze as the shadows carve it out into something far sharper and incisive than he can take . Instead, he swirls the wine around in his glass and stares out at the landscape of Bald Hills refracted through the window.

“What about yourself?” Andrei asks. “Is there anyone for you?”

Pierre nearly laughs, a thin, hysterical sound that he can hardly keep from pouring forth. “Not at all,” he says. “I’m not exactly what women look for.”

His friend persists. “Of course you are, you’re the son of a count, you’re a Russian in France and a Frenchman in Russia. You’re something new and exotic.”

“Andrei,” says Pierre, his voice low. “None of that matters. I don’t have money or a name, I’m—”

“A bastard,” Andrei finishes; hollowly, coldly. Pierre’s familiar with this voice—he knows his friend doesn’t mean it as antipathetically as it comes out; and yet he has never felt it directed at him, has never known how it cuts like ice. As he nods in reply, he tries not to let it show that everything, everything feels so much more when it comes from Andrei, everything affects him more. No word has ever been as important as that of his friend, and none could ever wound him in quite the same way. He fails to stop himself from reacting, turning his body more towards the window, tightening his grip on the glass.

Andrei notices, and falters. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it.” He rises and places a hand on Pierre’s shoulder, forcing the younger man to turn and look at him. His voice, just cold to the extreme, is now as soft as Pierre has ever heard. All the ice in hi m melts away with the growing warmth inside his chest as this moment of tenderness passes between the two of them.  His whole body aches in a way he can’t explain; the hand on his shoulder burning through to his skin. For an instant, he’s back on the Parisian rooftop with Hugo, and he knows now that the face he saw then was not the one he kissed, he knows the name that begged to slip from his tongue but got stuck just on the tip of it as the hands that were not quite wrong and not quite right moved across his body.

_ Oh God,  _ he realizes.  _ Oh God oh God oh God— _

He backs away, tripping in the pool of velvet beneath his feet. Andrei’s hand falls to his side as his face assumes a look of confusion and alarm. None of this registers, however, or only barely. All Pierre knows is the sudden burning of his cheeks, the pounding of his heart in his ears.  _ I have to get away from here, I have to get away from  _ him _.  _ He sets his glass down on the desk a little too hard, feels a drop splash against his hand. H e half-stumbles out of the room in his haste, slams the door shut just a little too roughly, leaving Andrei standing still, bewildered.

...

H e meets Lise properly, alone, the next day. In an effort to calm himself and keep from thinking of the previous night’s revelation, as soon as he is awake and dressed, he makes his way down to the gardens, following the directions of one of the house’s servants. Once he steps outside into the fresh air, he lets out a sigh of relief.  Though withered from the August sun, some sturdier flowers retain their colors, the trees their leaves . As he walks under one of them, a leaf drifts down on the pathway in front of him. He bends down to pick it up, and when he comes back up, she’s standing before him.

She looks smaller now, a little less in her element bundled in a shawl over top her airy summer dress. Younger, too; closer to Pierre’s own age. Her cheeks are glowing pink in the fresh air. “Pyotr Kirillovich,” she greets him with a nod of the head, her voice high and clear.

“Pierre,” he corrects her. He’s not used to hearing the patonymic of the father whose presence in his life is so sporadic; the Russian version of his first name harsh, a reminder of the country where he has never belonged, does not have a home.

“Lise,” she replies before he can respond with her full name in kind, the French pronounciation slipping easily off her tongue. Unsure of how to strike up a conversation, he bows briefly, awkwardly.

She saves him from having to attempt: “Andrei has told me so much about you.”

“Has he?” asks Pierre. He feels his face grow warm and hopes beyond anything that he isn’t visibly blushing.

“Oh yes,” she says. They begin to walk farther out into the garden, in the direction he was going and she was coming from. A bird calls angrily from the top of one of the trees along the path. The sun is beginning to strengthen and warm the air with the indolent heat of late summer, and Pierre has to press a sleeve to his forehead. As they walk, Lise slips her shawl lower on her shoulders, her step becoming freer. She continues: “You’re among his dearer friends, you know. There are not many that he speaks of as highly as you, still less that he speaks of so often.”

Pierre isn’t sure how to respond. This visit is just the third time that Pierre and Andrei have met, and the first that they have seen each other face to face since three years previously, when Andrei had come to France for some purpose or another that either he never made clear or Pierre never cared to remember. The only impression that Pierre had of the visit was how Andrei had gone out of his way to visit _him_ , a shy and awkward teenager holed up amidst a mountain of books and incoherent thoughts. Pierre had then been so different a person to now—it had been before he had met Hugo and the whole host of revelations that had brought upon him, before he had learned that he was one of many of Count Bezukhov’s sons and the only one to garner such favor with their father. And yet he still feels as if he’s still more lost and befuddled than ever before. Why would Andrei ever think of him?

He settles on a simple “I’m delighted to hear that,” trying to keep his voice level. “In his letters he’s told me all about you as well.”

“You write to him?”

Pierre nods. “Every month or so for the past two years, sometimes more. He’s really my only connection to how life goes on in Russia.”

“Well then,” Lise replies, “You must not have a terribly inaccurate impression of society. He almost never goes out or engages in it.”

“Yes, yes,” says Pierre. “He’s told me as much. He can’t stand it.”

Lise nods and half-turns to him, her eyes wide and blue. “It frightens me,” she admits. “Married life already seems so daunting, and I don’t know how much he will keep me from society.”

“He won’t,” Pierre replies. “I know he can seem cold, but he also can be kind. He wouldn’t want you to suffer.”

“I hope not,” she responds. The conversation lapses then, and they stroll aimlessly along the path, Lise’s gloved hand trailing along the dying bushes as they pass by. It’s an amicable silence, but to Pierre it seems excruciating, until Lise says, “I know many girls are married younger than I am, but still I’m not sure I’m ready for it. I hardly feel more than a child.”

“How old are you?” Pierre asks, then chides himself for its inelegant phrasing.

“Nineteen,” she replies. “I know how foolish that sounds, and Prince Andrei is not much older than I am, and my mother was seventeen when she was married, but I can’t help but fret over it.” Pierre doesn’t miss how she slips back into referring to Andrei by his title, and the sense of familiarity that she seemed to project between herself and him falls away. She seems to him nothing more than a girl—nineteen, she’s only a year older than him; Pierre couldn’t even begin to fathom marriage for himself, remembers his conversation with Andrei the night before. _You’re eighteen_ , he had said. _How would you know about love_? How much more could Lise know than him with just the year that separates them?

“Fret all you like,” he replies, feeling his heart going out to her. “I couldn’t imagine—”

As he stops, she presses a kiss to his cheek.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> back to paris, back to russia, falling in with the kuragins

After they go inside, Pierre spends much of the rest of the day lying in bed, fending off Andrei’s concern for him with vague protestations of a headache from behind the closed door. The drapes drawn, lying on top of the covers without even taking his shoes off, he closes his eyes as if so as not to see himself.

He tries to imagine Lise kissing him fully, tries to envision her hands and her eyes and her shoulders. Not as if she loved him—she clearly doesn’t, her kissing his cheek was clearly just an act of friendship and gratitude. And he doesn’t love her certainly, not at all. Still, he tries to picture just what it would be _like_. He’s never touched a woman before, isn’t sure it’s so different, isn’t sure he knows how. A second later, a wave of guilt for using his friend’s fiancee for his attempts at fantasizing washes through him, and he wraps his arms around his middle and stifles a groan into the pillow.

He refuses adamantly to give a name to it all, but—he knows what face he pictures instead despite himself, what he refuses to let himself see but does anway. One of his friends in Paris—Hugo’s friend, really—once told him that once you speak your love aloud it goes away if it isn’t true. “I love—” he begins. “I’m in love with—”

Afraid that it’ll be true, and afraid that it won’t be, and afraid of admitting it to himself, and mostly just afraid that he’ll be overheard, he can’t get the name out. It’s ironic—he remembers every time he received a letter from his friend, every time he read it over again, held it to his chest, repeated phrases in it to himself as he drifted off to sleep—every time, he would whisper the name. _Andrei_ , like a prayer. _Andrei_ like a wish, _Andrei_ like reverence.

He can’t say it now; it embarasses him even to think it. The man the name belongs to is far too close, far too distant and untouchable and _lovely_ ; the morning star, the brightest in the sky. He squirms, feeling all of a sudden a posturing child, slipping from the heights he’s tried so hard to attain. Touches a hand to his lips, tries to forget that he’s done so. Eventually, he falls asleep as he is, and dreams of troubled waters.

...

Much as Pierre would wish to stay and revel in the company and the attention of his friend, he’s glad when, the next morning, his things are finally packed and, after saying his goodbyes to Andrei’s father, and Marya, and Lise—the latter of whom he promises to write to—he’s finally standing at the top of the front stairs of Bald Hills, waiting for the coachman to bring his carriage up. It’s uncomfortable, somewhat; to be alone with Andrei and yet in the open air, to be saying goodbye with so many things left unsaid.

“You and Lise have promised to write to one another?” Andrei asks after a silent pause. Pierre nods. “Good. I’m glad she’ll have you as a friend.” Pierre flushes, but Andrei continues. “She and Marya get along, and we’ll be living in Petersburg, so she won’t be out of her society, but still I worry that I won’t be very good company for her, that she’ll suffer to live with me.”

“I think—I think you’d be excellent company,” Pierre replies. “But I’m glad you approve. She and I have a lot in common, and I’ll be glad to have friends when I come back for good.”

“Remind me when that’ll be?”

“At the end of next year. I still have two years left of my studies.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know,” Pierre admits. “I’ll work something out. My father’s intentions for me are equally as scarce as his presence.”

“If I can help you,” says Andrei. “I can get you whatever comission you want, just let me know.” Pierre bites his lip. Though his and Andrei’s letters to one another have become long and philosophical as of late, his budding pacifism is something that Pierre has held back. It’s not that he’s afraid of being challenged—he’s defended it amongst his peers multiple times—rather, it’s out of an unwillingness to risk incurring his friend’s disapproval. Pierre finds the military to be at odds with what he sees in his friend’s character, often times so similar to his own; and yet it is his career, something has drawn him to it. Pierre has saved this particular debate for a conversation face-to-face.

He’s spared from the deliberation as to whether or not to bring it up, however, by the sound of the carriage pulling up. He and the driver tip their hats to one another in acknowledgement, and Pierre turns to Andrei. They embrace, for perhaps a second too long (at least on Pierre’s part—he only dares to hope that its mutuality isn’t in his imagination), and he tries to memorize the sensation of his friend clasping his arm. Too soon, however, they’re parting, Pierre waving out the carriage window at the diminishing figure of Andrei on the step, fading into silhouette.

…

The next two years pass in a blur, his studies becoming increasingly harder and harder, his solace from them deeper and deeper esoteric philosophy. For a few months, he tries out Skepticism, spending much of it stumbling around drunker and blinder than before as his marks begin to slip. There’s worry that he won’t pass his examinations—Favre, the tutor from his father who’s been with him these nine years, invites him for dinner one night, and, over drinks in his parlor afterwards, expresses his disappointment in what he had expected all along would be his brightest pupil yet. “The kindling,” he explains, “is there. The spark is not. What use is a fire if it’s not blazing?”

“What use is a blaze if no one’s come to it for light or warmth?”

“Pierre,” his tutor reprimands him. “The fire doesn’t need to be seen to burn bright. And there are people around you, I’m sure of it. What of that boy you spend so much time with—Hugo?”

His veins run cold—it’s nothing, he tries to reassure himself. There’s nothing at all unusual in the amount of time they spend together. Everyone has friends when they are nineteen. “He’s—he’s very absorbed in preparing for his exams,” Pierre replies. “They’re coming up at the end of the month.”

Favre brushes it off. “It ought to be enough to have a self-sufficient light.”

Later, Pierre comes to dwell on the metaphor: _The kindling is there—the spark is not_. What could ignite the spark he hadn’t even known he had wanted—he had never considered before that he could burn bright—how far until he burns up? When Hugo comes to him that night, he finds him not amidst precarious towers of books but at an empty desk, rubbing his forehead and staring blankly at the grain of the wood, barely more than suggested in the waning light. He wraps his arms around Pierre’s shoulders from behind; Pierre shakes himself from his reverie to make himself lean into it. When they touch, he is brittle. He shakes apart in the midst of it, crumbling into the tears he’s not shed for ages.

When Hugo asks _what’s wrong_ , it makes Pierre think of how easy their relationship is, that his lover, his _friend_ can ask him to talk about how he’s feeling, and he will answer it—he nearly forgets to respond, comparing it as ever to Andrei’s inscrutability.

“I—I can’t,” he finally manages. “It’s not you I’m in love with—I could fool myself—I can’t. This isn’t fair to you.”

“Does he know?”

“No.”

“Will he?”

Pierre hesitates. “No.”

Hugo sighs, shifts closer to Pierre on the bed so he can hold him, cradle his head, press a soft kiss to his temple. “Is this okay?” Pierre nods, his cheeks damp—despite the difference in their size, he feels like a child in the other man’s arms, his embrace almost maternal. It’s— _peaceful_ , a word Pierre’s forgotten how to use. Quiet.

“Thank you,” he admits.

“Of course.”

They fall asleep like that, and when Pierre wakes up, Hugo is gone. On his nightstand is a cup of tea. They never see each other again.

…

Pierre hates to admit it, but it’s lonely—he has friends, to be sure, but with Hugo gone there’s no one in his life who knows the secret he carries just beneath his skin. He tries to guess who among his friends and acquaintences may be the same as him—keeping their own secrets tucked away. In Paris, there’s no one; or at least, no one he can be certain about, and so he holds his tongue. A year goes by and it’s his turn to sit his exams—despite his floundering, he pulls himself together at the last minute, scrapes out high marks by the skin of his teeth. Shortly—all too shortly—after that, he finds himself coming back to Russia, stepping into Moscow for the first time in ten years.

He’s not sure what he expects it to feel like—like Odysseus returning to Ithaca, perhaps, that kind of homecoming, bitter and absolute. Instead, it’s ambivalent—home, but not quiet, changed but not in a way that he can place. Everything looks the same—the skyline, the streets, the spirit—but there’s something _off_. Maybe it’s him who’s changed. He remembers the name of the street where his mother lives when she’s in the city, but can’t remember how to get there, doesn’t know where she is. They stopped writing several years previously—she had been young still, and without a bastard child, she had married somewhere along the line to a count he’d never heard of. Her life now, he supposes, has as little room for him as his father’s.

What’s different, he realizes, is that he’s utterly, achingly alone. He puts up in an apartment for a few months, scarcely going out, until a letter arrives for him from Petersburg. Vassily Kuragin: A man of his father’s circle he knows in silhouette. Count Bezukhov had brought Pierre to visit him exactly three times in the ten years they had lived in the same country, Prince Kuragin had been there in the drawing room when Pierre had arrived on one of those visits, when he was about seven. He remembers the prince in impressions—a powdered wig, a sneering mouth, nearsighted eyes. He had not yet been an old man, but his hands had been dry and brittle when he had shaken Pierre’s.

And now—this friend of his father is inviting him to come stay with them in a city he’s never been to before. He tries to recall what he knows of Prince Kuragin’s household—nothing. He tries to think of a motivation as to _why_ , exactly, the prince would invite him to come, and draws a blank. Still, he reasons, there’s no way he could be worse off for it than where he is now.

And so, two weeks later, he finds himself at the foot of a grand staircase leading up to the Kuragins’ mansion in St. Petersburg. He’s not embarassed, not quite; he knows that everything that makes him feel out of place is something that is celebrated in the Kuragins’ society—his foreign clothes, foreign accent, foreign mannerisms—but it is enough to make him self-conscious. He pulls at his waistcoat awkwardly as the door sweeps open and a footman comes to lead him up the stairs.

Prince Kuragin is accompanied by a boy Pierre doesn’t know—just younger than him, strikingly beautiful. “You must be Pyotr Kirillovich,” he greets him just on the far edge of warmly. “My son, Anatole,” he continues, gesturing to the man at his side. Anatole inclines his proud head slightly.

“Call me Pierre.” Prince Kuragin’s smile spreads across his face like oil.

“The Frenchman.” Pierre isn’t sure how to respond. “I’m sure you’re tired after your journey. Misha,” he gestures to a footman hesitating somewhat behind him, “will show you your rooms. We’ll be eating at seven o’clock if you’d like to join, and I’ll be expecting you in my study afterwards either way.”

Misha leads him down hallways he’s not sure he’ll be able to remember his way back from and opens the door. Pierre walks in—somehow, his trun is already waiting for him. When the door clicks shut, he sinks into the couch, curls up, and falls asleep.

…

After dinner, Prince Kuragin shepherds him into his study, where he proceeds to interrogate him about his father, his time abroad, his plans for the future. He relinquishes him after half an hour of Pierre’s vague half-responses and _I don’t know_ s, and Pierre is grateful to go. His impression of the prince isn’t _negative_ per se, but there’s definitely something offputting about the man, and it’s excruciating to handle him by candlelight. He’s walking back to his room when he runs into Anatole, who exclaims, “I was hoping I would find you. Come—”

Pierre finds himself following along in Anatole’s wake without knowing where they’re going, or why. The answer, it turns out, is a sitting room in the opposite wing of the house to his own rooms, where wait the turned heads of a woman and another man. They turn when Anatole enters, and Pierre’s eye is immediately drawn to the woman.

“My sister Helene,” Anatole introduces her. “And my friend Fedya Dolokhov. Pierre.” He doesn’t get a surname or a patronymic.

“J'avais entendu beaucoup à propos de vous,” says Helene, her voice soft and melodious on the French syllables. She’s beautiful, quite as much so as her brother, and Pierre, not meeting her gaze, stutters out a response and turns his gaze to Dolokhov, who’s watching him consternately. Dolokhov’s gaze flickers to Anatole, whose look is inscrutable.

“Take a seat, tell us about yourself,” Anatole addresses Pierre, pouring him a glass of wine. When Pierre takes it and moves to sit down on the unoccupied settee, Anatole picks up his own, having been set down when he went to fetch Pierre, and sits next to his sister.

And so Pierre begins recounting  his life, eliding less glamourous details in the company of the refined Kuragins and their intense friend. He tells them about his mother, a noveau riche-type who all too quickly ruined it all by falling under the spell of the charming count, but leaves it to inference that she had her hopes dashed when he deigned not to marry her (there’s no point in pretending anything—he’s sure the Kuragins either know about him or could easily do so). He skips also the infrequency of his father’s visitations, skips that such a level of affection is what the count bestows upon the favorite of his children. He tells them of Favre, of his overblown speech and tendancy to bombasticness— _ the self-su _ _ fficient light _ , he remembers, and promises to himself that this new iteration of himself is going to be the one where his light draws others in. He skips Hugo, obviously, but makes reference to him obliquely, one among a number of friends and acquaintances in his small, erudite circle of which, of course, he has spoken to very few since breaking with Hugo, and has written to none at all since leaving Paris. He doesn’t mention Andrei, and he’s not sure why—there’s something too perfect and sacred, too pure, about their friendship, to be spoiled by describing it to ears he can’t yet trust.

“I’ve always wanted to visit Paris,” remarks Helene. “It sounds like a dream.”

“It’s a beautiful city,” Pierre replies, unsure of how to qualify such a remark.

“Our brother studied in Paris, too,” says Anatole. “Although he’s been back for a while so I don’t expect you would ever have crossed paths with him.”

“Did you?” Pierre asks.

“Anatole studies here, in Petersburg,” Helene interjects.

“I’ll finish next year,” he adds. This confirms what Pierre had guessed about Anatole’s age—he’s around eighteen or nineteen, although something about him seems younger—that he falls more into the category of _beautiful_ than _handsome_ , perhaps, or how his confidence—pridefulness—doesn’t seem at all to slip towards haughtiness.

After that, the rest is small talk. He finds out snippets about the others—more about Anatole’s education and how he plans to join the army, how many seasons Helene has been out, a bit of gossip about their parents, only one of whom Pierre has met. Dolokhov is conspicuously reticent. As the gathering begins to break up, Pierre confesses to Anatole that he’s not sure he can find his way back to his room, and Anatole offers to escort him. As they’re walking back, Pierre inquires about Dolokhov.

Anatole hesitates. “Don’t tell him I told you this,” he warns. “He can be proud, and he doesn’t like to talk about his background. He was never terribly well-off, not really, but our families used to be friends, and you’ve met my father—our mothers knew each other as girls—Fedya is just a little younger than my brother—he grew up practically a part of the family. But his father was killed in Poland in ‘94—he’s supported his mother and sister by himself since he was fourteen. He’ll never let onto it though.”

“He’s in the army?”

“An captain,” Anatole replies, a hint of pride in his voice. Pierre files that away, unsure what to make of it. Just then, they reach his rooms, and he thanks Anatole, who wishes him goodnight.

…

Pierre isn’t sure how long he was intended to stay with the Kuragins, but, as he struggles to decide what to make of his life, the months roll by, and he spends more and more time in the company of Anatole, whom he finds to be charming if slightly vapid, but even that is a breath of fresh air after the stuffiness of the academics he had surrounded himself with for the past few years. He initially had avoided writing to Andrei and telling him that he was back, although not sure why, but he finds himself genuinely _happy_ , something he’s not accustomed to, and as summer slips into autumn, his newfound verve combined with the nostalgia of it being the same season as when he had first visited Bald Hills two years previously makes him write to his friend again. He talks about Petersburg, about Anatole, how different his crowd of friends here is to the ones Andrei knows of from Paris. When he signs the letter, he doesn’t close the envelope, but instead starts writing a second one to Lise, now Andrei’s wife.

Pierre feels guilty that he missed the wedding, which had taken place a few months previously, and guiltier still that he’s not written to Lise since. His letters to her have been just as frequent as his letters to Andrei—more so, at times—and he’s come to consider her a dear friend. Though only partially, Andrei’s fears have come to pass—she’s confessed to him how she feels like an outsider in Andrei’s family. Pierre feels for her, understands her, couldn’t begin to offer her advice, but rather, commiseration. After a moment of thought, he seals the envelope with his letter to Andrei—he wants to keep his communication with each of them as separate as his friendships.

For it is a friendship that he’s found with Andrei—his crush has passed in the time intervening, he’s grown up, and when he and Andrei write to each other, it’s as equals. Pierre has developed into an intellectual match to Andrei’s seriousness and contemplation, and it’s been months since he even thought of the feelings he once had for him.

Pierre, in fact, hasn’t thought of... _that_ side of himself for quite some time, since breaking off with—yes, Hugo, Hugo who had taught him that it was possible to be with another man, that he was capable of desiring it. He supposes that as well as the first, Hugo is the last man that Pierre will be with—in the rare times he’s been involved with _anyone_ , it’s been with women—whom he’s felt nothing for, yes, but in comparison to his previous fear of it, he feels as close to normal as he ever has.

It’s all shattered just a few days later. One thing that Anatole and his friends are (inordinately, in Pierre’s opinion) fond of is the kind of wild and extravagent parties that are only possible when one’s father is taking care of both the expense and the cleanup—it’s at one of these where when Pierre finds himself, intoxicated half out of his mind, he decides that he’s done for the night. By this point, he knows his way around the house without trouble, but in the state he’s in, he can’t quite remember which door and corridor is which—stumbling through the halls, he stops in front of a door. He’s not quite sure where the door goes, he just knows that it’s a door he’s opened before, and frequently. He pushes it open— _oh._

It’s Anatole’s room, or rather, the anteroom of his suite. The anteroom has a desk, and bookshelves, chairs and a couch around a hearth, for more intimate conversations than a sitting room would hold. His actual bedroom is just off the anteroom, behind a closed door—not that that matters at all, as who Pierre recognizes from behind as Dolokhov has another man whose face he can’t see pinned against the door.

They spring apart when the door opens—it’s Anatole, of course it is; his face is stricken with, beyond anything else, fear, and he quickly reaches down and picks up the shirt discarded on the floor, holds it against himself. Dolokhov smirks, tossing his head back. Pierre turns and runs.

Somehow he makes it back to his room without making any more wrong turns or mistakes, immediately sinking into the couch and pressing his hands to his face. He’s not sure why this knowledge is as devastating as it is—he _likes_ Anatole, considers him a good friend; if anything, the knowledge that his friend is _like him_ ought to come as reassuring.

He sits like that for some time, enough to sober up quite a bit, fretting. A knock sounds on the door. “Who is it?” he calls.

The door clicks open without a response. Pierre turns around—it’s Anatole, his cheeks flushed, shirt still untucked. “May I?” he asks. Pierre nods.

He comes and sits down on the other end of the couch from Pierre, tries to speak, but isn’t quite sure where to start; runs a hand through his dishevelled blond hair. “I don’t know...I don’t know how to talk about this,” he admits. “To you. I’m sorry you had to see that—I hope you can. Forget you ever did, I hope you won’t think any less of me. I was—I _am_ drunk, I never would have...” he trails off feebly, his tone admitting the excuse.

“It’s okay,” Pierre replies. “It’s okay, I—I could never judge, or think any less of you—I’m...relieved, honestly.” Anatole sniffles and cocks his head in confusion. “I—when I lived in Paris. I had...” he hesitates, before plunging forward, “I had a lover. Named Hugo.” There it is—the bombshell. Pierre thinks idly of Julius Caesar and lets out a shaky breath. “I’ve never talked about this before.”

Anatole grabs his hand, holds it tightly, his eyes sparkling and a smile beginning to creep across his face. “So we are the same.”

“I suppose so,” says Pierre, thinking of how Dolokhov is Anatole’s closest friend, and of Andrei’s clear blue eyes. He doesn’t ask Anatole about love—doesn’t think the word or anything to do with it. It’s enough to know that even if he has to confront this thing within himself, live the life that it entails—his friends are like him, a certainty he’s never had before. He doesn’t have to hold his breath and watch his step and assume that they assume, everyone involved too scared to speak up—he won’t have to hide around Anatole, or Dolokhov—he assumes Helene knows too, the three of them are thick as thieves from a life he wasn’t part of, can’t match up to—Pierre is just happy to have friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had initially intended to post this as one long work without chapters, so this is the last section that i had already written completely - i have most of chapter three about about half of chapter four written, but i'm not sure when i'll get around to posting them! thank u all for reading... i love this fic and i love you


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Everyone is dead,” says Andrei, “but you, my dear; dead or dying, but you’re alive. I love you because you’re the only living man I know.”

His life continues like that for months hence—like a breath just released after long having been held, his days spent reading and wondering and avoiding the decision bearing down on him, his nights drinking and carousing with Anatole and Dolokhov. Helene, after a period of being unsure what to make of him, at some point has decided that he’s not worth her time, and so he almost never sees her. Anatole is a discomforting mix of genuinely warm and friendly to Pierre, and too oblivious to him to make an effort to connect. He stays wrapped up in his own little world that seems to have room in equal measures for Dolokhov and for the women they visit (Pierre goes along sometimes, usually hangs back, never enjoys himself and always makes excuses to leave before the others). Dolokhov too is inscrutable in his attitude towards Pierre—they’ve kissed a few times while drunk, once gone further, but there’s an undercurrent of cruelty to the man that Pierre doesn’t find directed at himself often, just enough to take him aback.

Andrei and Lise move back to Petersburg in the beginning of October, as the days begin to grow short and cold; Pierre, although dying to see both of them, keeps his distance for another week making excuses to them and to himself. The day he resolves to go and visit upon the weekend, an invitation arrives to a soiree to be hosted by one of Prince Kuragin’s friends—he invites his children, but practically demands that Pierre accompany him (“Have you ever been out in society as an adult? I’m sure your father would prefer that you not make a fool of yourself next time you’re with him,” he argues, and Pierre has no choice but to give in). The date is for the same day he had planned on visiting.

And so, when the Saturday evening rolls around, he dresses himself up for the first time in what feels like forever, in clothes he bought in France but has never worn, stares at himself in the mirror for a far too long, trying to imagine away some of his awkwardness. It doesn’t work, of course, but he’s primed to be self-conscious, a feeling confirmed by the reaction he’s met with—of disgust and consternation; mostly, he’s ignored.

Lise shows up with the first wave of guests as the room begins to fill; Pierre wants to go up to her but she’s surrounded from the first with a crowd of friends and acquaintances. At length, he catches her eye, and her face breaks into a sweet smile. When she makes her way over to him she embraces him and he kisses her hand.

“How are you, dear Pierre?” she asks him. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”

“Too long,” Pierre agrees. “I’m well, you look lovely. Is Andrei here?”

She purses her lips. “No, he didn’t come with me, he may be coming later. I don’t know,” and refuses to take the subject further, leaving Pierre to catch up his alarm and confusion at the antipathy in her tone.

“How are you?” he asks.

She gestures at her middle. “Well enough, all things considered.”

Their conversation is interrupted by Ippolit Kuragin, a presence Pierre has just the slightest awareness of, as although he lives with his family, Pierre has hardly had a single conversation with him. He’s holding a pair of opera glasses to his eyes which give him a peevish expression.

“Greetings, Pierre,” he says with absurd formality. “Liza, my dear, it’s so good to see you.”

Lise shoots Pierre a bemused look, but humors Ippolit and allows herself to be guided into one of the chairs arranged into a circle, in which a discussion he’s clearly not welcome in is taking place. Alone once more, he finds himself a couch on the edge of the room, perches on the edge, and watches a few more people trickle in late and join various circles.

Andrei does come, conspicuously late, and when he strides through the door, Lise half-rises as the circle she’s in turns to look at him. He doesn’t notice Pierre, who spots him immediately, and goes to sit in Lise’s circle, on the opposide side from her. Pierre springs up and goes over to him, doesn’t think to debate the action before he places a familiar hand on his friend’s left shoulder. Andrei’s irritation morphs into a broad and vivid smile as he turns in his seat to see that it’s Pierre, reaches up his right hand to grasp Pierre’s. He turns back to the conversation, but in the moment before his face is out of view, his eyes look the brighter for it.

Later, they sit in his study, which Pierre tries hard not to map onto the same location at Bald Hills the last time he had gone to visit his friend. He’s grown up—his feelings have changed—he’s happy to be settled comfortably on the divan, waiting for his friend’s return without apprehension. When Andrei comes in, he again takes Pierre’s hand for a moment before walking over to lean against the windowsill. It’s a mirror image of the last time, down to Andrei’s agitated gazing out at the city streets below.

“You’re going then?” Pierre asks.

“Yes.”

“But why? You said earlier how much you admire Bonaparte, why go fight him?” Andrei replies with something vague and indecisive about the country, and pragmatism, and things must go the way they’re supposed to go, which convinces Pierre not at all. He frowns—“That’s not it though, is it?”

“Ah Pierre, you’ve always known me too well,” he says, picking at the fabric of the curtain. “The truth is, my life exhausts me, and I can’t find another way out.”

“What about your life is that?” Pierre asks. Andrei sighs.

“I…I adore Lise, she’s a wonderful woman—I shouldn’t have married her—I shouldn’t have married at all. I’m trapped by society, and society’s expectations, and there’s nowhere now that I can escape from those expectations—I always have to go home and be a husband—I feel trapped.” Pierre is taken aback by his honesty—he’s never dared to style himself as his friend’s confidante, his older and more glamorous friend.

“And the only way to escape all that is to go away and fight in a war you don’t believe in?”

“I’m an adjutant, I won’t be on the front lines,” Andrei replies, but his eyes are unconvincing. Pierre frowns, but before he can reply, there’s a knock at the door. Andrei passes a hand over his brow, before answering, “Come in.”

Lise sweeps into the room in a flurry of trains, comes over to Pierre’s divan, and embraces him, half-sitting, before springing up again and coming to rest perched on the edge of a chair Andrei has pushed over for her. Even pregnant, she reminds Pierre of a bird; fluttering about, dancing with folded wings, coming to roost, longing to fly.

“It’s late, Lise,” Andrei says. “Your doctor said you should go to bed earlier.”

“See how he cares about me!” Lise says to Pierre. “And yet he’s going to go get himself killed and abandon me. What will I do then?”

“Lise, I—”

“We were just talking about that,” says Pierre. “I don’t understand why he has to go either.”

“You see!” she crows. “Why won’t you listen to Pierre, if you don’t listen to me? Why won’t you listen to me?”

Pierre moves to leave, but Andrei grabs his arm to hold him back, shooting a glare at Lise.

“Don’t—” Pierre attempts to intervene, but stops short as Lise presses a kiss to Andrei’s forehead and, blowing another to Pierre, equal in her affections, glides out of the room as lightly as she came in. Andrei sighs, sinking down next to Pierre on the divan.

“I’m sorry for making you see that. I know Lise is your friend.”

“What’s happened between you?”

“Nothing,” says Andrei, “and that’s the problem. Nothing’s happened between us. I don’t know—truly—why I can’t feel anything for her. She’s lovely, I once did, I know I once did. There’s nothing there. Don’t get married, don’t make my mistakes, Pierre, don’t be like me; don’t give your life to someone you love, make sure you’re not in love. I was in love, truly, and that’s where I made my first mistake.”

“Perhaps you’ve just fallen out of love,” Pierre suggests. “Maybe if you were still in love with her, none of this would be happening.”

“Maybe,” says Andrei, and he leans his head against Pierre’s shoulder. Pierre freezes, every nerve on edge. After an excruciating second, he awkwardly reaches around to touch his friend’s hair, turns slightly to press his lips to the top of his head. Andrei looks up, his eyes alive.

“I would give anything to be like you,” Pierre counters. “You have so much ahead of you, such greatness.”

“Everyone is dead,” says Andrei, “but you, my dear; dead or dying, but you’re alive. I love you because you’re the only living man I know.”

“But for what kind of a life?”

“You could do anything, you can. You’re excellent. Just leave Anatole Kuragin alone.”

“He’s my friend!” cries Pierre, hurt.

“He’s not a good friend for you, you’re meant for more than his hedonism and idleness. I know him, and I know his friend Dolokhov, and you’d do well away from both of them.”

Pierre wants to tell him _, I can’t_ , but that would entail telling him why, and he could never have Andrei know what Anatole and Dolokhov know about him—he holds his friend in too high an esteem to chance (ensure) losing Andrei’s esteem for him. He’s bound to Anatole and Dolokhov to keep his secret—he knows about them, but there’s nothing that can stick to Anatole, and Dolokhov’s reputation as a duellist means no one would dare react if they knew about him. Pierre, on the other hand, is already flirting with ignominy through his father’s fault by virtue of his birth—Anatole and Dolokhov know something that could destroy him. He can’t lose their friendship—can’t give them reason to drop him.

Instead, he vainly promises that he won’t go to them tonight, knowing in the back of his mind that it’s a promise he can’t keep. It stings to lie to his friend—to _Andrei—_ but it’s worth it to hide that truth.

…

Everything after that happens so quickly Pierre scarcely has time to take a breath. Within a week, he’s wealthier than he’s ever dreamed, and has traded each and every one of his concerns for a set he doesn’t recognize. Aside from his core of friends—Anatole, Dolokhov, Lise (to whom he writes)—everyone’s opinion of him changes too, and his head is left spinning. He writes to Andrei regularly, recieves a third as many letters as he sends, most of them shorter. Nothing changes for him, he supposes, and there’s only so much one can react to someone else’s circumstances. Almost before he can catch his breath, he’s married, to Helene, and he’s grateful that if he isn’t to marry for love, it can be to someone he’s close to, if only through their degrees of separation. Their relationship is strained, but her brother mediates it.

Andrei writes so infrequently that it takes a long time for Pierre to notice when he stops after all—he hears about Austerlitz, of course, but Pierre’s gotten used to his friend’s silence—and there’s no one who would think to tell Pierre—that Pierre would care—for news of this one man among so many. It’s not until a week after news of the battle breaks in Moscow, in fact, that the dread of his suspicion suddenly grips his heart. He sends off simultaneous letters to Andrei and to Marya, begging each for word alike. It’s when Marya’s reply arrives alone that he knows before he even opens it.

Marya tells him: Andrei’s not among the dead, Andrei’s not among the living. Lise doesn’t know and is not to. Sick with grief, Pierre doesn’t respond, just throws himself into the duty of carrying on life. One by one, veterans of the battle begin to trickle back into the city, and Pierre can’t look any of them in the eye but does anyway, lets Dolokhov come to live with him as the part of himself that he is.

When the letter comes, it’s on a particularly bad day—he’s taken to writing to Andrei and burning what he writes, he opens the sealed envelope with hands shaking, ink-bloodied from it. He doesn’t know what to expect—the seal is one he doesn’t recognize, there’s no name attached to it. A fine, slanting script accuses him of ignoring what’s going on right in front of his face—an affair between his wife and his friend. He brushes it off as gossip—he’s never known Dolokhov’s preferences to lie with women, and he doesn’t expect Helene to be capable of it.

Still, when the veterans of Austerlitz gather in the English Club, extending an invitation to him that he can’t help but feel is in his friend’s place, absurd as it is even to think, he looks at Dolokhov in a new, suspicious light. Double entendres that he wouldn’t have noticed before abound, all pointing towards the anonymous letter-writer’s truth, and Pierre finds it harder to brush them aside than he should. He doesn’t care much for Helene, certainly doesn’t love her; any affairs of hers shouldn’t—don’t—bother him. Nevertheless, anger bubbles up within him.

It’s not the anger that makes him do it, but rather, an awful moment of fear. Clearly aware that he’s gotten under Pierre’s skin, curious as to what will make him snap, Dolokhov shifts the focus of his remarks: “Here’s to beautiful women,” he says, “and to men who love them.” From across the table, he raises an eyebrow at Pierre and coolly sips his toast—if anyone around them’s figured out Dolokhov’s game, they’ll surely be able to tell to what depth he’s now cut, what he’s insinuating about Pierre, what he’s _revealing_ about Pierre. When he half-screams the challenge, his voice is shrill with a note of terror.

…

Pierre regrets the challenge as soon as he makes it, of course, but by then, everything is too late and spiralling. They meet in a clearing in the middle of the woods: The gathering twilight is frosty, and Pierre’s breath puffs in the air. His hands tremble on the pistol, and Anatole’s gentle ones steady him.

Their fingers brush: It’s all Pierre can do to not imagine a world where this ends in Anatole’s soft and steady hands around his wrist, checking for a pulse, his fragile and delicate hands in their expensive gloves stained red as he tries to stem the pouring out of a bullet hole. He tries to imagine a world without himself in it: Everything going on. A smattering of tears, and then silence. You die, and things go on.

He steps up to the barrier, and looks Dolokhov in the eye. They’re not so far apart, after all, and if he closes his eyes, they could be brothers. Suddenly, the act of shooting him seems ridiculous, and his mouth goes dry.  _ You are like me _ , he repeats to himself. It becomes a mantra:  _ like me like me like me _ .

The gun goes off; he finds it in his hands. Dolokhov face down in the snow, snowflakes resting in his pale hair, unmelted; waiting. Dolokhov, raised up on one unsteady arm, gesticulating with his pistol.  _ Cover yourself _ , someone screams. In answer, Pierre lets his gun drop to the ground like a body, stretches his arms out like a martyr, waits for death that never comes.

He looks at Dolokhov lying face down in the snow. It’s melting on his skin, dripping down his pale hair. His face is bloodless. He’s fit to melt into the Earth. Nikolai Rostov gathers him into his arms and, in panic, presses a kiss to his forehead.  _ Like me, like me. _

This is all that happens: Pierre turns and runs.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the shortest chapter yet; a treatise on love. natasha enters the picture.

When Anna Pavlovna comes to Pierre to tell him the news, it’s a surprise on more than one level: First, that Anna Pavlovna has an interest in Pierre. Second, that she’s parsed out the relationship between him and Andrei that would make him worthy of being the first person she came to. But above all, the news— _Your Pilades is alive_ , she says, and it’s all of a sudden hard to breathe—comes as a shock.

It’s a good time to get good news. Pierre’s hardly left his little corner of the house for weeks, since the ground started dropping out from under him, again and again and again. In the coming days, he throws together haphazardly things to visit his friend, trying to guess at all the variables of his trip. Anna Pavlovna drops by again, right before he’s about to set out to Bald Hills, telling him that she’s heard Andrei is instead living at his own estate. Pierre sets out immediately for Bogucharovo without bothering to check the veracity of this.

Since finding out that his friend is alive, he’s tried to sit down and write a dozen letters, has scrapped them all right away. He couldn’t possibly write down everything there is to say, and the idea of sending something short, half-written to Andrei is impossible.

When his carriage arrives in front of the half-constructed house, then, it’s clear that the estate is occupied, but there’s no sign of its occupant’s presence. Pierre creeps in on an uncertain step, checking the public areas of the house, such as they are, to no avail, and has finally decided to settle himself in the sitting room when a door shuts upstairs.

“Who’s there?” Andrei asks, and Pierre’s choked by his own heart at the familiar voice and can’t respond. Footsteps down the stairs, and Andrei’s stopped dead in the doorway. After a moment in which the world passes through the five feet separating them: “You came.”

Whatever held him stuck now lets him go, and the space between them’s closed up, Pierre embracing his friend and holding him tightly, certainly far too tightly and for too long, his living body, his breath, the softness of his waistcoat and warmth of his forehead against Pierre’s cheek. “I thought you had died, it was unbearable. I don’t know how I carried on.”

“I thought I had died too. I did die, I came back from the dead, and I can’t describe to you what’s in my heart.” And Andrei tells him all about love, and the sky, still just out of the rough-hewn doorframe, still grasping his forearms as if he might just fly away again, his eyes bright, and Pierre imagines the sky reflected in them.

…

The rest of the visit to Bogucharovo is—painful. They talk more about the sky, and death, and their respective attempts at learning to love. Andrei’s revelation is beautiful, profound, but it’s not complete—he tells Pierre what he wishes to believe for himself, what he’s trying to believe for himself, but when it’s not on his mind, he doesn’t speak in accordance with it.

“Believe in it,” he implores him on the ferry, as if Andrei hasn’t done this a thousand times before, as if he could ever rationalize himself into embodying his beliefs, as if he hasn’t tried. Later, back at Bald Hills, the night before Pierre’s departure back to the city, he repeats himself. “Andrei, you’re _right_ ,” he says, trying to tell by his tone what he can’t put into words—how beautiful what he’s said really is, how beautiful _he_ would be for believing it. “There’s nothing in this world that means anything next to what’s above it, and beyond, and around. We have to love everything—to encompass everything with it. You’re trying to, but do you?”

Andrei sighs, his face pressed against his hand. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know if I am, I don’t know if I can, I don’t know how to. I can grasp it abstractly, but I know that I’ve never seen it, never learned it by example. I don’t know how to draw that from myself.”

“You’ve been in love.”

“Love has been left on the tip of my tongue,” he replies. “I can’t speak it, it’s just out of my reach. I know it by its mark—that may be all that it is, though. Maybe there’s nothing deeper at all and I’m grasping at nothing.”

“That’s not true,” says Pierre. “That can’t be true.”

Andrei changes the subject abruptly: “I’m glad that you’re here,” he confesses, and it’s one of the first times Pierre’s ever heard him talk about his feelings without heavy layers of abstraction intervening. “There’s no one else I could talk about this with—I can’t imagine anyone else would understand. You’re like a part of myself.”

“Yes,” Pierre agrees quickly. “Yes, I feel the same way.”

He realizes he’s unconsciously moved closer when their knees brush, realizes how deep he’s in when neither of them flinch back politely from the contact.

“Don’t do this,” says Andrei. Pierre doesn’t move. Andrei’s voice is high: “Don’t touch me.” But he doesn’t move, and Pierre doesn’t either. His knee is cold.

“Andrei,” says Pierre, “ you’ve been in love before.”

“I’ve loved before,” Andrei agrees. “And I’ve fallen out of love before.” Pierre’s heart is lodged in his throat, and his head swims. He’s a second away from having to physically grasp the other man just to steady himself, when he says:

“You’re my best friend.”

Of them, Pierre is the younger by several years, but it’s him who has done this before. Feeling faint, he offers Andrei his hand. It’s the most perilous thing he’s ever done. The world crashes to a halt—

Andrei takes it. Pierre rises to his feet, draws his friend up with him like water from a well, or poison from a wound. “I—” he begins, but doesn’t give voice to what’s been on the tip of his tongue these ever-many years. Finally, he gives in to steadying himself, broad hands coming to rest on Andrei’s narrow shoulders. After another breath held and released, Andrei’s settle on his waist, like motionless dancers, frozen in a stolen moment of time. The air is heady and stifling— _I’m not ready for this_ , Pierre wants to admit, but there’s no other moment where it can happen. _Stay with me_ , he wants to beg, but it’s him that’s leaving in the morning. _This will never happen again_ , he realizes, and he wants to cry. A strand of Andrei’s dark hair has fallen into his eyes and he brushes it away, allowing his hand to linger on his friend’s cheek.

It’s Andrei who is brave. He’s been in love, been _married_ , but he kisses like he’s never done it before: Timid, and clumsy, and dry; falling apart in Pierre’s arms.

Falling apart, and falling forward, careening together, and the closed-mouth kiss he’s initiated is broken off as his forehead crashes into Pierre’s lip. His hands, small and tender, come up to clutch at the lapels of Pierre’s coat.

“Is this okay?” Pierre gasps, because he’s still not sure, and because the change to touch untouchable Andrei is still such a marvel.

“This is never going to happen again,” he replies, but Pierre’s seized on to that _again_ with the fury of so long yearning for something he never, ever thought would be possible.

His clumsy fingers still on the buttons of Andrei’s waistcoat, and he finds he can’t bring himself to move, even as Andrei guides Pierre’s off his shoulders. _This is never going to happen again_ , Pierre knows, and so his heart is full.

_Andrei_ , he breaths his name in reverence, and Andrei takes his face in his hands again. Pierre takes the opportunity to tangle his fingers in the dark hair he’s ached to touch. “Thank you” he whispers, but it’s broken off with another kiss.

He knows: For Andrei, this isn’t happening, there’s nothing worse than the fact that it is, and so he won’t acknowledge it. Not in the morning, barely now, but the evening has long since begun to spill through the sheer curtains into the room, illuminating the dust motes in white and gold, and Andrei’s face with shadow, and it’s easy to pretend that the moment they’re sharing is a moment wrenched away from time itself.

The house is Andrei’s and no one else’s; unfinished as it is, it’s barely even staffed, and Andrei’s servants have been staying out of Pierre’s way so that he’s scarcely seen one since he arrived: They don’t make it to Andrei’s bedroom, instead splay themselves on the carpeted floor,  perfectly at home in a night so unexpected and bizarre.

Their bodies are barely touching, but their hands are entangled and intertwined such that Pierre nevertheless can’t find his own ending point, and the night chill is beginning to permeate, to pervade; and he comes, for once, to consider things fundamentally  _alright._

“When will I see you again?” Pierre dares to ask, but is met only with silence.

…

Andrei Bolkonsky is not in love with Pierre Bezukhov: This he knows. Pierre knows, has long known that the things that burrow themselves deep within his heart are not things to be dredged up, not things to be shared—how could they be. Andrei, for all that he’s chosen to be with Pierre as his friend, chosen to stay with Pierre despite every cause he’s given for him to not, is _excellent_. His excellence holds him high aloft, he would never stoop to fall so low as Pierre has always been. Andrei is stupendous.

Nevertheless, Pierre burns like a candle: A light insufficient to see by, but with a self-sufficient glow. His heart leaps with tongues of fire when Andrei brushes by or near him, but the flames remain too small to warm his hands

A year passes, and then another. Andrei’s letters come, as clockwork: A page, double-sided, twice a month. Pierre’s replies are more variable as he alternates between wanting to tell Andrei _everything_ , to share his life with this other man as best as he knows how; and wanting Andrei not to constern him, or pity him. _When will I see you again_? flickers in the back of his mind, ready to be quenched by the memory of his friend’s non-answer.

And yet, despite it all, the time does come: The year is 1810, and he’s known in vague terms that he and Andrei are living in the same city. When he’d heard, his heart had jumped to call on him, but Pierre had squashed it down.

Now they find each other on a ballroom floor, eyes meeting instantly across a crowded room, a thousand people who mean nothing to Pierre compared to _Andrei, Andrei,_ and his feet bear him over to the man whose gravity he’s caught in and consumed by. He feels in his friend’s clasp upon his shoulder, a touch gentle but at once tense, the (he hates to call it what it is, _longing_ , so he settles on:) missing that he’s felt reflected back at him.

When Andrei inquires as to his person, he demures. “My protegee is here,” he tells Andrei. “Natalya Rostova. It’s her first ball—you should ask her for a dance. I know she would be delighted.”

Andrei’s face, Pierre aches to realize, lights up. “Natalya—I know her. I’ve met her. She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

Pierre hums his reply. “Yes,” he says. “She is. I’ve known her since she was a child—she’s the sister of one of my oldest acquaintances. I’ve watched her grow up—she’s always been remarkable.”

Andrei, Pierre will come to know, is lost for Natasha far before he is himself cognizant of it, a losing that begins at his own beckoning.

For Andrei, the night is a tremulous and shining start. Andrei Bolkonsky is not lost in Natasha’s arms: He is found.

…

“Oh God, Pierre,” says Andrei, “I love her,” and Pierre aches for a word that’s never been applied to him. “Pierre, I adore her. Pierre, Pierre—”

There have been so many times where Pierre has whispered, thought, or said the other’s name like reverence, like prayer, that to hear his own name in Andrei’s delight at another feels like apostasy.

Here’s because: Were you to ask Andrei, everything started with Natasha, and everything ended with Natasha. Were you to ask Andrei, he was born again in Natasha’s embrace, just like he was born again in Pierre’s words.

“You know,” says Andrei, “last night was not the first time that I met her? That months ago, I chanced to visit her father’s estate—Otradnoe. That I heard her play and sing, and now I have seen her dance. That night I sat on my windowsill and stared up at the moon. When you were studying in France, I used to think of how the same moon hung above us in different skies. It was not quite full, but just enough that everything was bathed in light, and she stepped out on the balcony—it was like she was talking to me, and she was talking about me—the same kind of things you would tell me. That I am sad, and want to be happy; lonely, and want to be loved. It’s like she was in love with the whole world—love without any indirect object needed. Just _love_.”

And Pierre recalls what Andrei told him ages ago at Bogucharovo, the afternoon before the night that Andrei’s tried so hard to forget: That staring at the sky that should have been his deathbed, he had realized that he was a part of the world, too. Andrei had loved his revelation, but he’d not lived it until Pierre had guided him into embodying it. That Natasha’s love can now reach out and touch Andrei because of Pierre—it’s beautiful, and it’s terrible, and Pierre feels achingly, desperately alone.

“I know you are in her confidence—” Andrei continues. “Has she talked about me? Said anything? I know I’m not right for her, I’m too old and too sad, but I’m still young, and her brightness is shining down on me, and I rejoice in the light of the sun. Has she said anything at all?”

“No,” says Pierre, because it’s true, and because it’s also true, he also says: “But I know her, and I don’t know if she loves you, but I know that she could. Go to her. Run, don’t look back.”

“She’s the _light_ , Pierre,” Andrei implores. “I saw her in the moonlight but I love her like the sun—she’s the brightest, warmest thing, and she’s dawning onto—the daytime of this tired life.” His friend’s face glows, and Pierre knows that Andrei’s caught fire with a spark that he knows so very well—a light self-sustaining, he realizes. Natasha is a torch whose presence kindles something within even him, and Andrei’s lit up with it.

“ _Go_ , Andrei,” Pierre returns. “I know love, and I know that you’re in it.”

Andrei reaches out to Pierre, and he lets himself be enfolded in such familiar arms.


	5. Chapter 5

A ndrei Bolkonsky is not in love with Pierre Bezukhov: This he knows.  Andrei loves Pierre, yes, for longer and in ways more profound than just about anyone; until Natasha, simply  _more_ than anyone else. But there is a difference between  _love_ and  _in love_ , and a difference between one night and one lifetime, and if there is nothing else that Andrei Bolkonsky knows, he knows  _himself_ , and he knows definitively on which side of either line he stands.

Still, he goes home from the ball near tears, undresses and throws himself upon his lone and level bed and lies, chest heaving, as if he’s crying, but his eyes are dry. And when the revelation of love strikes him—for once he doesn’t scoff at metaphor of arrows:  H e’s transfixed; born and destroyed all the same—he throws on his boots and coat and stumbles at once back out into the cold, and it’s Pierre’s address that he shouts at the arrested driver.

He knows what he looks like, stumbling into his best friend’s study still half-undressed, but for once, he’s unbothered by the lack of composure. “Oh God, Pierre,” he says before Pierre can say a word, “I love her. Pierre, I adore her. Pierre, Pierre—” His hands run through his hair, across his face, before coming to rest clasped around Pierre’s forearms, and the love that he’s longed to feel for  _so long_ pours forth from his weak tongue and tired lungs. And Pierre—dear, bright,  _living_ Pierre, living like Natasha is living, vibrant and radiant like Natasha—tells him to run to her, and the minute the words leave Pierre Andrei feels them, knows them, can’t help but live them.

And so he does: The next day finds him at the Rostovs’ doorstep, pounding the knocker in time with the pounding of his heart. The count’s footman greets him at the doorway and ushers him into the sitting room where the family is arranged, Natasha standing just by the piano and her cousin sitting at it. When he enters, her hand flies to her mouth, and her cousin makes to stand, but he gestures for her to sit, and she does. The countess Rostova rises to greet him, presses his hand and bids him sit.

“Natasha was just about to sing for us, weren’t you?” she says, and her daughter flushes.

“I wasn’t—I don’t—I don’t have to,” she protests, her face reddening.

Andrei recalls the night he met her, the moon shining white on her face and her song curling through the chilly night air. “Please,” he says, settling into the proffered chair.

…

The first thing Andrei does, of course, is go to Pierre—and this is the cruel irony, he thinks, that of all the time they have known each other, of all the time that Pierre has longed to be close to him, they see each other more frequently in the months of Andrei and Natasha’s courtship than they ever have before and, as he will come to find out, ever will again. It’s hard to swallow as straight vodka, which Pierre becomes increasingly familiar with as the winter passes.

It’s 1810, going on 1811, and Pierre spends all of December traipsing between his study and his bedroom, leaving in his wake a trail of clothes changed too infrequently and wine bottles too frequently spent. When Andrei announces his visits he makes an effort to clean up, ordering the few servants that he has not commanded to leave him well alone, changing into whatever clothes he can find. He thinks, in these moments, of Andrei coming to him just after the ball, half-dressed and half-crazed, his cheeks glowing pink and his eyes sparkling blue and wishes, not for the first time, that he was more like his friend.

Now they are sitting as they have so often sat before, Pierre on the couch, his feet tucked up under him, Andrei on the floor, the back of his head resting dangerously close to Pierre’s ankle, passing back and forth a bottle of wine. He’s not sure what he would do if that space between them were to close. It’s hard enough to put his lips to the same glass bottle-mouth that Andrei’s have just left.

“You’re my best friend,” says Andrei, and it’s all Pierre can do not to remember Bogucharovo. He’s begun, he realizes, to divide their lives into episodes, discrete and able to be named. They do not speak of anything past, and Pierre knows that Andrei is desperate to forget what he has allowed Pierre to know about him, to take from him. So they speak of Bogucharovo least of all, and Pierre lets his mind remember what he wills his body to forget. “It’s almost the new year,” he says, without waiting for Pierre to reply to his first sentiment.

Pierre checks his pocketwatch: 12:04 AM. So it is the 31st of December now, and just shy of twenty-four hours before they will stand in the Rostovs’ parlor together, Andrei trying not to look at Natasha and Pierre trying even harder not to look at Andrei.

The thought makes him want to curl up into a ball, tuck himself away on some shelf or in some crevice until he shrivelled up and gathered dust. The fact is that, desperate as he is for Andrei’s company and happy as he is at Natasha’s, it will be a momumental effort to compel himself to go.

He pauses, the bottle near to slipping from his fingers, and Andrei looks up at him. “What is it?” his friend asks, and he shakes his head. Andrei takes the bottle from him, their hands a conspicuous inch from one another.

“It’s nothing,” Pierre breathes. “We’d best sleep now if we are to stay up again.”

…

The party is, as Pierre had suspected it would be, a misery. He shows up late, trying to slip in through the side doors unnoticed, as oft he has done and lately he has fallen out of the habit of, although of all the times he’s done it, the urge has never been so immense as it is now. But as he slips out of his carriage, his feet crunching on the packed snow beaten into the drive, uncomfortably stiff in his starched and tailored clothing, he sees the front doors burst open, and a tall, thin figure silhouetted in the light that comes through them from the inside of the house. Of course: Natasha, as bright and exuberant as she always is, and something very deep and inexplicable stirs within him.

“Dear Pierre,” she says, pulling her shawl around her shoulders as she rushes down to meet him at the base of the stairs. “We’ve missed you.” And she takes his hand, not at all thinking of what it looks like for her to take his hand, and leads him inside, to where the warm glow of candles make the gilded walls shine, and Pierre’s head begins to spin before he’s had even a sip of wine.

“ _Mamá_ , _”_ she cries. “Pierre’s arrived.” And not only the countess Rostova turns at his name, but from halfway across the room Andrei as well. The countess gives Pierre a smile and nod, but Andrei disengages himself from the conversation he’s in the middle of, with a man Pierre’s certain he ought to recognize but doesn’t, and comes over to stand by Pierre and Natasha. He claps Pierre on the shoulder and presses his hand, then turns to Natasha.

“We’re about to begin the dancing,” she says, and his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“May I have this first one, then?” he asks, and she nods. The candlelight flickers bright in her dark eyes. Pierre averts his, though he’s not sure why. Andrei says, “I’ll find you afterwards.”

Pierre says, “That’s alright.”

Of all people he expected to find shivering out on the same balcony he himself had stepped out onto for air, it would not have been Nikolai Rostov—he’s not sure why he’s surprised to see him, it’s his family, and his house, and his sister, but he is all the same. He’s known Nikolai for longer than Natasha—they were the same age, had been playmates as boys, and he’d always recognized the same ebullience in both—even as Nikolai had grown up and into his role as an army man, he had never lost the almost childlike verve and twinkle in his eye that reminded Pierre so much of his sister.

Now, though,  his wrists hang over the railing even as his sloping shoulders shake with the cold. When Pierre comes out, he turns around, and his face is impassive.

“You should be enjoying the party,” says Nikolai.

“So should you,” Pierre replies.

Nikolai sighs, runs a hand through his thick hair. “How long have we known each other, Pierre?” he asks. Pierre shrugs, counts back.

“Going on twenty years?” he suggests, and Nikolai nods, almost listlessly, but not quite.

“You know,” says the other man, “when I stand in that ballroom, there’s no warmth from the fires, it’s as cold as this balcony is now. It should be a lovely sight—all I can see is what it costs.”

“Costs?” Pierre is dumbfounded—he had grown up with the impression that the Rostovs were significantly better off than his mother—and it’s been so long since he’s had to think twice about his own finances.

“Pierre...that’s a concern of ours now. My father won’t acknowledge it—my mother’s put it on me to solve it. I can’t do that if he keeps carrying on as we always have—”

“Why you?” Pierre asks. Nikolai waves the question off.

“ _Mamá_ would see me married off to an heiress and lay the whole thing to rest.”

“But you would rather marry—Sofiya Alexandrovna.” Nikolai moves to nod, then hesitates.

“I thought so, Pierre,” he replies. “I _thought_ I loved her, thought I could spend my whole life with her—I don’t know what’s changed, but it _has_. I can’t imagine myself marrying another woman, but the thought of marrying Sonya—through no fault of hers, she’s lovely—is _dismal_.”

And a familiar voice echoes through Pierre’s head:  _Love has been left on the tip of my tongue. My life exhausts me, and I can’t find another way out_ . He shakes his head, as if to knock the memories clean. Nikolai looks at him curiously, and he shifts the movement to a nod. “I understand,” he says, although he could not begin to presume that their disinterests in women come from the same place.

The smallest glimmer lights up Nikolai’s eyes. “Do you?” Pierre nods again. He hesitates, runs a hand through his hair again before stuffing it into his pocket, deliberating. “Do you know,” he says at last, “ that it is my fault after all?” Pierre looks at him uncomprehendingly. “Our...financial situation.” Pierre shakes his head. Nikolai tries very hard to spit out the name, but it’s in his voice that he can’t: “ _Dolokhov_ .”

Pierre starts. “You know I...”

“Duelled him, yes,” Nikolai replies. “I made his...acquaintance in the period of his recovery from it.” Pierre winces.

“Do you know...why?” he asks, and Nikolai shakes his head. “We knew...certain things of each other, and I was afraid for either to get out. He goaded me into it, Nikolai, but more than I was angry, I was...afraid.”

Nikolai’s pale even for the cold, looks like he’s barely breathing. “May I ask what he knew?”

Pierre hesitates. “Things I very much would not have liked to have been made public.”

The other man takes a step closer. “Do you know,” he remarks, in the image of nonchalance, “that when I was taking care of him, he made himself...dear to me. Feigned an affection that I returned wholeheartedly. When he had recovered, he proposed to Sonya as a means of making his farce known. I still believed then that he cared for me—he gambled me into ruin while I trusted him to settle the score between us privately.”

Pierre nods, hardly daring to read between the lines. Since he lost the friendship of Anatole and Dolokhov, he’s hardly dared to think that another might be like him—and the way they speak now is so veiled and circumspect there’s no way for him to know for sure what the other man is really saying—he’s nowhere near certain enough to reveal his own hand.

Still, before he turns to go back inside, warm himself in the light of the candles and the reflection of Andrei and Natasha, he dares to press Nikolai’s hand, hoping to tell him with the touch what his courage fails him to put in words.

…

Within the month, Andrei has proposed to Natasha, a development which Pierre has toasted to with him, then sat for hours into the night, the lingering taste of champagne turning sour on his tongue, and then he is gone before Pierre has time to turn around and ask where. On the eve of his departure, he comes to Pierre’s Petersburg house one last time, wringing his familiar hands and begging Pierre to look out for Natasha. But when spring rolls around, he has to leave for a tour of his estates long before the Rostovs pack up for the countryside, and he falls out of touch with both as he sinks ever deeper again into the melancholy that’s gripped him all these years. When autumn begins to blow through the countryside, it’s Moscow where he moves back to, where he doesn’t see their faces wherever he turns—and where there’s no one watching to ask him if he’s alright. He’s only ever been able to endure the question from Andrei’s lips.

When it happens, it’s very fast. Pierre’s spent nearly four months alone in Moscow when the Bolkonskys move into the city—the first time in years. It’s there, then, to which Andrei will return, and with the year of his absence almost up, he tries to throw himself into the act of pulling himself together, which very quickly slips back into the familiar spiral, which only deepens when Marya Nikolaevna writes to him that Andrei’s journey has been delayed by his ill health. It’s worry for his friend that he’s drowning now, and tinged with guilt at having let his acquaintance with his sister fall by the wayside. Not dimly enough does he remember his promise regarding Natasha, but he can’t bring himself even to inquire at the Rostovs.

The beginning of February, Pierre has always felt, especially in Moscow, has always felt like a precipice. The winter feels like it ought to be churning itself away, but it lingers, every year for longer than it should. The city is still and empty, frosted over with grey and bleakness, and the air feels like it is waiting for something. It’s at the beginning of February that Natasha moves into the city with her father and her cousin.

He feels like he ought to call on her at least, but he can’t bring himself to do it, feels rooted to his cold and empty mansion open like a tomb. Dolokhov is staying with the Kuragins, and it’s not from memory of his own short-lived relationship with the man, and still less its end, but only what Nikolai told him the year before that keeps him from taking up acquaintance with him and Anatole. Bad habits, indeed.

The city feels like it’s holding its breath, and Pierre is too, but there is no indication of what is to come until it does. A week after he hears that the Rostovs are in town, he’s woken in the middle of the night by a servant, and as he stumbles, bleary-eyed into the parlor, tying his dressing gown, it’s to Marya Dmitrievna, a women he hardly knows, whose customary sternness seems now to belie deep panic.

“I apologize for the hour,” she says, “but I couldn’t think of who else to turn to.” Pierre blinks in confusion, and she heaves a sigh. “Natasha—” she begins, and at the name his heart trembles to a stop— “I need you to talk to her, I don’t know who else to turn to. Her father’s just left and I—” She takes a breath, again, composes herself somewhat. There’s snow on the hem of her coat, and it’s started to drip onto the floor—absurd for him to notice, but he does, and he times his own shallow breathing to its steady sound. “Pierre, she’s just tried to elope with your brother-in-law—” and his heart implodes, ears collapse, and he thinks back to Anatole’s uncharacteristically frequent presence in Helene’s parlor in the past week.

“Allow me to dress—” he finds himself saying. “I’ll go back with you.” She nods, curtly. And so he finds himself, not half an hour later, in her home, kneeling before the couch where Natasha is sitting, her knees tucked up to her chin, tears tracked down her face and staring off into space. Behind him, Sofiya flutters about like a bird on a broken wing.

“Natasha,” says Pierre. “What happened?”

“Why would you stop me?” she asks, voice hard and fixed on Marya Dmitrievna. “He loved me—loves me like Andrei never did.” A icy knife slides between Pierre’s ribs, cuts softly at his heart.

“Natasha...I know him,” Pierre interjects. _Know him more than you can know_. “He doesn’t...couldn’t. I’m glad that you got away from him.”

“He was going to _marry me_ ,” she replies, and her gaze for once tears itself away from the painting on the wall opposite her, and lands, though unfocused, on Pierre. He shakes his head.

“He wasn’t.”

“How can you _say_ that? Have you ever been in love like this before?”

“Natasha—” and again, he calls her by her name— “he _couldn’t_. He’s married already.” At this, Marya Dmitrievna moves from the doorway, a triumphant gleam in her eyes, but Sofiya stops her.

“No,” and her voice is soft and vulnerable—wounded already—as a child’s. “I don’t believe you.”

In the seven years of their acquaintance, Natasha’s never not trusted him, and it’s only now, with that, that the corners of his eyes glow hot. _Believe me, please_ , he wants to tell her, wants to take her hand in his until she believes him, but 0f course he can’t.

“When I find him,” breathes Marya Dmitrievna from the doorway.

His heart breaking: “I will.”

…

The timing of things, as it often does, gets worse. Two days after Pierre screams at Anatole until he leaves the city, and after two days of his own misery, curled into himself on to too-wide expanse of his bed for hours on end, Andrei returns to Moscow. The day before he arrives, Pierre receives a letter asking him to visit at his earliest convenience, and so it is the next afternoon that he arrives. It is not late in the day, but dusk has already settled into the crannies of the street with shadow and the house is, as oft Pierre has seen it, dark, save for the soft glow escaping from three lonely curtained windows, two on the second story, and one on the first. A second after Pierre knocks on the door, one of the second-floor ones goes out.

The house is exceptionally quiet. The footman leads Pierre into the parlor, where across the bare room, a figure stands back turned to Pierre, and hands clasped behind him.

“Your honor,” says the footman, and the figure turns.

Andrei crosses the room with short strides, but he stops just short of pressing Pierre’s hand, as once he might have, and the smile that Pierre knows is rare but for him does not, for a second or in barest hint, flit across his face. His eyes are very  pale, and very cold.

“Pierre,” he greets his oldest friend, and Pierre returns the greeting, suddenly unsure of what to do with his hands.

They make their way to Andrei’s study—this much, then, is not such a departure from their routines with one another, although they’ve never before been in Moscow together—and Andrei sits in his desk chair, legs crossed and looking very small. There’s nowhere for Pierre to sit, so he he stands, leaning against a bookshelf next to the trunks still not unpacked.

“How are you, then?” Andrei asks, and he manages a small smile. “You’re getting stouter,” although not unkindly. Pierre remembers delicate hands on his waist.

“You’re getting old,” he retorts. In the stronger light, he examines his friend carefully, in detail rather than impression.  He’s paler than he remembers him, his eyes ringed a deeper maroon. A new worry line’s appeared in the furrow of his brow, and Pierre’s not sure how sharp his cheekbones used to be. He looks like far more time has passed than a year and change.

“I am.” A pause, where their eyes are locked for too long. Andrei breaks the gaze first. “You know, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how I found out?” says Andrei. He doesn’t ask how Pierre did. He shakes his head.

“ _Bourienne_ ,” he spits out the soft French syllables. “The countess Rostova wrote to my _sister,_ then _she_ showed it to my father. He all but threw it in my face when first I arrived. I’m a fool for trusting her—any of them,” and Pierre isn’t sure who _her_ is: Natasha, Bourienne, or some personification the _any_.

“Andrei, I’m sorry—I truly am—I told you I would look out for her—”

“By God, Pierre,” laughs Andrei, a harsh and bitter bark. “Of all of us you are the least to blame. But where is Kuragin now?”

“Gone,” replies Pierre. “I told him to leave, and he did. I don’t know where he’s gone—Petersburg, perhaps, or the country—”

Andrei hums. “It’s my fault, of course—I shouldn’t have _trusted_ her, she’s so young, she loves too much—but as I cannot challenge myself—” He moves towards Pierre, towards the end table near the wall, where rests his pistol. He touches it, but Pierre moves to lay his hand across his friend’s. As he takes the weapon their fingers brush, something which now Pierre is scarcely even conscious of.

“Andrei, you _can’t_ ,” he implores, but the other man just twitches his hand away from the point of their contact. “ _Please_.”

“And just let him go free?” says Andrei. “No. Even if he were—if I were—I can’t.”

“You don’t have to,” says Pierre. “I’ve done everything I can to make sure no one hears of it. No one will know what happened. Tell Natasha you’ll take her back—that you’ll forget what’s happened. You told me once we should forgive each other—forget mistakes.”

“I told you that,” says Andrei, “and I was right to do so. We should, but I can’t. I’m not that kind of person, and I can’t become him.” He moves from the table to reach inside one of the trunks on the floor around it, pulls out a stack of letters bound with a yellow ribbon. “I have her letters. Will you give them to her?”

“I will,” says Pierre, “but Andrei—you _can_. You’ve changed before, you can again. Forgive her. Forgive him.”

“I can’t, Pierre,” Andrei replies. “It won’t happen. All I can do is set things right, and then set it out of my mind.”

“This isn’t how you set things right” objects Pierre, but Andrei’s eyes harden.

“You’re my dearest friend,” says Andrei. “You always have been. But I won’t talk about this any more with you. Please give the letters back for me,” and Pierre hears what he doesn’t say: _I can’t._

It’s the final word: There’s nothing left for him to do but nod and take the letters, leave the study and Andrei, and set out, alone, for home.


End file.
